Duory

Maker

📌

Hello, bonjour, and bom dia! My name is Gboyega, I live in Nigeria, and I’m an indie app developer. I also happen to love language learning. It is one of my happy places—albeit I haven’t actually succeeded in learning any of my favorite languages to the point of fluency in my 10+ years of trying (yet!). I am currently attempting to learn French, Portuguese (Brazilian), Mandarin, Japanese, and Swedish. And yes, I’ve been using Duolingo (please don’t judge). I am also introverted, which I imagine doesn’t help, seeing as I need to talk to people. One thing I’ve been wanting all these years, though, is a notes app for language learners. Not a flashcard app—a proper notes app. So, in hopes of solving my note-taking problem, I decided last July to make a language learning notes app to serve as a companion app for Duolingo users like myself. I’ve tried using the Apple Notes app (which is what I use for all my notes in general), but it is not designed for language learning—same with all the incredible note-taking apps in the App Store. I finally got to build this app over the last 2 to 3 months, and I’ve just published it in the App Store as “Duory.” Duory lets you create dynamic language learning notes using powerful embedded phrases. Embedded phrases are interactive, auto-adding transliteration and letting you translate** without leaving the app. You can even record phrases in your own voice for listening and pronunciation practice later in a playlist that you can control from your lock screen! Disclaimer: This is a freemium app with paid subscriptions, as this is the only thing I’m presently doing for income. You can also try out the monthly paid plan for 7 days or get 50% off the yearly plans this month or 30% off in February. Duory is only available on the iPhone right now, but it is coming to iPad and Mac later this month. LANGUAGE TRANSLATION SUPPORT Duory uses Apple’s Translation API for on-device translation. Here’s the full list of supported languages: • Arabic  • Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified)  • Chinese (Mandarin, Traditional)  • Dutch  • English  • French  • German  • Hindi  • Indonesian  • Italian  • Japanese  • Korean  • Polish  • Portuguese (Brazil)  • Russian  • Spanish (Spain)  • Thai  • Turkish  • Ukrainian  • Vietnamese I am very grateful for the response I got from the community here with my previous (first!) app, and it is the only reason I’m encouraged to post here once again. Thank you so much, and cheers!

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5mo ago

Nika

minimalist phone: creating folders

Like the educational purpose. Tip: Try to exchange link order because I visited Threads first and the main purpose should be to click on the apps. It could help you increase the chances to download he app :)

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5mo ago

Gboyega D.

Duory

Maker

@busmark_w_nika Thank you! Much appreciated.

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5mo ago

Gboyega D.

Duory

Maker

@busmark_w_nika Your comment is a lifesaver. I haven't figured out how to change the order of the links but I removed the others in the meantime. Thanks again!

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5mo ago

Nika

minimalist phone: creating folders

@gboyega When you give people too many options, they can be confused :) Give them one and they have a clear direction. You are welcome! :)

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5mo ago

Jun Shen

Congrats on launching! Your app's UI and promotional graphics are truly beautiful. 👍 I'm still not fully grasping its core function though - is it a quick text input tool that works like a phrase collector/bookmark system?

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5mo ago

Gboyega D.

Duory

Maker

@shenjun Thank you so much, great question! One of the issues I faced when using a regular notes app for my language notes was the inability to capture example phrases in a way that would help me easily recall pronunciation (or at all!) when I revisited my notes later. This isn't much of a problem with a language like French since it uses a Latin-based writing system. However, Mandarin and Japanese are much harder to capture in a regular notes app—think kana, romaji, and pinyin. The ability to add Latin representation and translations to a non-Latin-based language just by adding a phrase is incredibly helpful (in my opinion). Let’s go back to French for a moment. Something I used to do, back when I had a BlackBerry (about 200 years ago), was to keep a playlist of French phrases in the music app. I would listen and repeat out loud—much like people used to do with language-learning CDs or tapes during their commute. That got me thinking: why not incorporate this idea into a dedicated language notes app? An app that lets you attach audio to captured phrases and listen to them as a playlist on the go. Lastly, there's the matter of automatically gathering and tracking learned words. This has always been a pet peeve of mine with Duolingo. I had no convenient way to review the new words I learned in a day. Sure, there's a giant list buried somewhere, but it doesn’t show the words you learned today, the phrases they were used in, or let you revisit learned phrases anytime you want. In summary, I’ve added a number of tools on top of a regular notes app, specifically designed to help language learners!

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5mo ago

Jun Shen

@gboyega thanks for this super detailed explanation now I understand that your app is not a general workbook app, but specific targeted to non English language, this is a super amazing point and you can emphasize that to help people better understanding its amazing power👍

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5mo ago

Gboyega D.

Duory

Maker

@shenjun I agree! Thanks so much for the support 🙌

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5mo ago